And Now, the Weather
by blue mood blue
Summary: Re-Education: Cecil attends more re-education sessions than the average Night Vale citizen, and the company is always terrible.
1. And Now, the Weather

And Now, the Weather

Summary: Carlos discovers Cecil's opinion on thunderstorms.

* * *

It happened the first time in the middle of traffic, which was a monologue of existential terror that Carlos had to admit sounded eerily accurate to what being stuck in a traffic jam felt like. The station was coming in as clearly as always from the tiny, outdated radio he kept in the lab, despite the torrents of rain that were falling outside. It made a nice change from the torrents of gelatinous goo that covered the town a week ago – shoveling the car out of a substance that stuck to the shovel required a lot of patience.

There was a huge flash of lightning, followed by a sharp rumble of thunder. Carlos absentmindedly noted that it must have happened fairly close, and then, a moment later, that there was dead air on the radio. Concerned enough to let it distract him from his research – because, after all, if a gelatinous goo storm couldn't ruin the connection, a regular rainstorm shouldn't stand a chance – he walked over and fiddled with the controls, searching the channels before ending up back where he started, Cecil's voice trickling out tentatively.

"We have some… um, some interesting news about the new dining experience opening up next to the Ralph's, known only as the, ah…" There was a sound that Carlos thought might be heavy breathing, a sharper intake of breath in anticipation of more words, and another startlingly close lighting strike, again followed almost immediately by thunder. There was a small cry of dismay and an audible thump.

Carlos waited through the dead air this time and was rewarded with the sound of a nervous Cecil, former train of thought entirely derailed. "Hello, Night Vale? As your faithful, community radio host, I am obligated to stay with you even in the middle of this terrible, horrible, unendingly vile weather, so as always in such undesired conditions I will continue reporting the news, as it happens, from here beneath my desk. I can tell you that staying indoors would be advisable, as there have been several nearby lightning—" His sentence was interrupted by the third lightning strike in as many minutes, followed only by a whimper.

Sparing only a moment to find his keys and give the warm, dry lab and his current project a last, longing glance, Carlos sighed and walked out into the rain, wondering, for neither the first nor last time, why Cecil couldn't just tell him about things like this instead of broadcasting it over the radio.

~0~0~0~

"Hello again, Night Vale! Sorry for the interruption, but you'll never guess who just joined me at the station!"

"_Cecil, are you sure we should be down here? I'm still kind of wet, I don't want to drip on any electrical equipment…_"

"That's right, it's perfect, beautiful Carlos! He was listening to the show and like the truly gallant and chivalrous man that he is, rushed to my side in my time of need! Listeners, I don't know what experience you've had with love, if you are entrenched deeply in it's clutches and sink deeper with each passing day in an ultimately futile attempt to bring greater meaning to a mutual existence within an immense universe that doesn't acknowledge you, or if you are in the middle of a more casual fling, but I can say with absolute certainty and minimal bias that this is what love is all about."

"_Cecil—_"

"And now, live from Carlos's lap, the weather!"

"_Cecil!_"

* * *

A/N: So, extremely short first foray into the fandom, but hopefully there'll be more (and longer) fics to come. This was inspired by a post found on the Night Vale Head Canons tumblr page, so credit for the idea goes to whoever submitted it (shamelessly stolen and used by me - sorry, and thanks for the wonderful idea!). Thanks for reading!

(Disclaimer - Welcome to Night Vale and its characters belong to those creative people over at Commonplace Books)


	2. Re-Education

Re-Education

Summary: Cecil attends more re-education sessions than the average Night Vale citizen, and the company is always terrible.

* * *

The brick walls of the basement of City Hall chilled the room while bright, florescent lights illuminated everything too harshly, making the shadows along the wall deep but too small for anything to hide. Cecil shifted in the hard, uncomfortable chair as the figure near the wall droned in a ceaseless monotone. His hand twitched into a fist before he forced it to relax. He knew what was coming next. He had been forced into the basement too many times not to know exactly what re-education entailed.

Steve Carlsberg raised his hand, and Cecil did his best not to groan aloud.

Cecil had never particularly cared for Steve, even from the first time they met, in which the large man expressed his doubts over the actual benefit of community radio and punched Cecil lightly in the shoulder as he laughed booming and obnoxiously, as though physical violence was an appropriate measure to take when trying to convince another individual of your clever wit. There might have been a snide remark on the radio program the next morning, and some distasteful glances over public functions when they happened to encounter each other.

Somehow, though, because the grave and terrible forces beyond the edge of the universe deemed it so, or because his luck was just that bad, he and Steve Carlsberg's frequent re-education sessions were always scheduled on the same evenings, forcing them into immediate proximity to each other for several tedious hours at a time. It did little to help their relationship; as the re-educator droned on late into the night about all of the information that it was municipally mandated they were not allowed to know, Steve seemed to find issue with absolutely everything. It was physically _impossible_ for that to happen to wheat and wheat byproducts, according to his _expert_ opinion, and why were dangerous creatures kept in the library instead of regular librarians like literally every other town in America, and dog parks were not supposed to look like that. Cecil wasn't sure how a man who worked in _used care sales_ was suddenly confident in his authority on absolutely everything, but he was not hesitant to assert it, loudly. It was very nearly worth the single-vital-organ fine required to sit out from a session.

"We let our children go to school with machine guns, but not pencils? That doesn't make any kind of sense, if you ask me. What's a kid gonna do with a pencil that he can't do with a gun?"

"It's not the potential damage posed by the writing utensil," the instructor meekly explained, again, for the third time since the session began, "it's the ban on writing utensils specifically."

Most citizens of Night Vale would accept that explanation and move on with their lives, but not Steve Carlsberg. No, Steve Carlsberg would not be satisfied until he had inconvenienced as many people as possible.

"That's no kind of way to run a town. That's not how the rest of America does it, and that's not how we should do it here. Who they hell decided that was something that needed a law? We should be doing something about all of that irresponsible government spending, building a waterfront-whatever-it-was in a town in the middle of the desert, who's ever heard of…"

Cecil did his best to tune the large man out. He had to stop talking eventually, Cecil always told himself, and it would be far more satisfying to tell the town at large about the incident over the radio in the morning rather than confront him to his face. Most of the time, Cecil was fairly successful in keeping himself calm; personally, he attributed it to the soothing sound of the instructor's voice, which was almost hypnotic.

Tonight was different, though, because tonight Cecil had to cancel a date with Carlos. Carlos was, of course, very understanding and gracious about the entire situation, but that didn't mean that Cecil wasn't determined to at least try to see his wonderful boyfriend for a couple of hours before going home. The success of his plan depended on the re-education session ending as quickly as possible, and Steve Carlsberg – Steve Carlsberg, with his horrible array of colored polo's, his white picket fence that clashed horribly with his neighborhood's décor, and his disturbing and obsessive fascination with contact-heavy sports – was getting in the way of that.

Cecil had very little patience for anyone who got in the way of quality time with his boyfriend.

Steve had only just gotten into the swing of his current rant when Cecil decided he'd had enough and slammed his fist down on the table. It hurt a bit more than he'd anticipated, but it was worth the pain for the instant attention he received from everyone else in the room. Even the source of the radio host's ire was startled enough to halt in his booming criticism of seemingly every single aspect of the town that he could draw to mind.

"Steve Carlsberg," he began grandly, rising from his seat slowly in a gesture of intimidation that he was not normally able to indulge in, "are you so afraid of the tenuous existence of your own reality that you feel the need to force it upon others? Do you doubt your own idea of normalcy so completely that you fear it will cease to exist if you do not remind the universe at great volume what you think it has promised you? I remind you that you are a member of this community, no matter what you or the community has to say about it, and you are going to behave like a member of this community, because Night Vale is all you have that is certain in this vast, impenetrable void. It is the final physical tie that binds you to reality and you will not _question_ it, and you _will not anger it_. Do not mock your link to your existence, Steve Carlsberg, because it has _not_ been promised to you."

There was stark silence in the room as Cecil took his seat again, brimming with satisfaction. Steve stared at him for a moment before sitting down as well, and Cecil might have burst with pride at finally achieving something very close to an actual victory over that jerk.

"Well," the instructor meekly began, "that was quite eloquently put, Mr. Palmer." Cecil beamed – it had been a rather inspiring bit of prose, hadn't it, Carlos would be so proud – "…but I'm afraid the extended interruption from you both will require another re-education session for you and Mr. Carlsberg."

Cecil didn't bother to conceal his groan.

"Another session already?" Carlos looked concerned, but the expression might have been the result of his task, since he was closely and carefully examining Cecil's now-bruised hand. It had drawn his immediate attention when Cecil walked in, and he insisted that he wouldn't listen to a word Cecil had to say until it was seen to. They were sitting at the scientist's kitchen table with the first aid kit open and prepared, and the "seeing to" of the injury didn't seem to put Carlos's mind particularly at ease. "What did you do this time? …and what did you do to your hand? I think you've fractured a bone."

"It was that darn Steve Carlsberg," Cecil growled, Carlos frantically reaching out to stop him from slamming his other fist against the table. "He always does this, you know, starts telling everyone about how everything in Night Vale is _backwards_ and _wrong_, and a "_government conspiracy_" when really all he wants is attention. It's pathetic, and I was so hoping that I would get to see you tonight that I just couldn't let him really get started because he can go on for hours, that Steve Carlsberg, and I just…" Cecil noticed his boyfriend staring at him and trailed off. "What is it?"

Carlos bent his head back over Cecil's hand, feeling each of the bones in gentle embraces, but Cecil could still see the smile overtaking his face. "You really wanted to see me that badly?"

"Well of course," Cecil replied and could have gone on for hours, but he was pretty sure that Carlos knew most of what he would say by now anyway. They grinned at each other goofily until Carlos found the exact problem area on Cecil's hand.

He removed a few supplies from the first aid kit. "This is definitely broken. Probably not very badly, but you should try to avoid using it very much for a while." He placed Cecil's hand on the table. "I like spending time with you, too, but could you please refrain from injuring yourself in the process?"

As it happened, the next incident with Steve Carlsberg involved copious amounts of acid and considerably less injury to his boyfriend, so Carlos supposed it was as good of a compromise as he could expect.

* * *

A/N: I was just going to leave this one at that first little story, but I figured this was a good place for my less-serious Night Vale writing, so I'm just going to stick little drabbles and the like here as I think of them. ^_^ If anyone has any ideas, you can always suggest 'em! Thanks for reading!

(Disclaimer - Welcome to Night Vale and its characters belong to those creative people over at Commonplace Books)


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